Shashi Tharoor Wiki | Biography| Height| Age| Weight| Son| Wifes| Caste| Family: Shashi Tharoor is an Indian politician and former diplomat, who is now serving as a member of the parliament, Lok Sabha, from Trivananthapuram, from the year 2009. He was born on 9th March 1956 in London, England. He is also the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing committee of external affairs and a globally recognized speaker on Indian Politics and economy.

Shashi Tharoor’s wife, Pushkar’s death had created a sensation as it came shortly after a bitter spat between the couple over the twitter, over his alleged affair with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar. Pushkar, 51, was found dead in a suite in Hotel Leela, a luxury hotel in Chankayapuri, on the night of January 17, 2014.

Over four years after Shashi Tharoor’s wife, Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a hotel suite in New Delhi, the Delhi Police on 14th May 2018 charged the senior Congress leader with abetting her suicide, claiming there was enough evidence to proceed against him.

Shashi Tharoor Bio

• Tharoor's Career in the United Nations started in 1978 as a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva.

• He was head of the UNHCR office in Singapore from 1981 until 1984.

• In 1989 he was appointed as the special assistant to the Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, the unit that later became the Peacekeeping Operations wing in New York.

• Tharoor was appointed the director of communications and special projects and executive assistant to the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1996.

• He became Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, and as Head of the Department of Public Information (UNDPI) in 2001.

• In 2006, the Government of India nominated Shashi Tharoor for the post of UN Secretary-General. Tharoor finished second, behind Ban Ki-moon.

• On 9 February 2007, Tharoor resigned from the post of UN Under-Secretary-General and left the United Nations on 1 April 2007.

• In 2009 Parliamentary Elections, Tharoor was the MP candidate for Congress Party from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Tharoor won the election by the margin of about 100,000.

• Under the Govt. of Manmohan Singh, he was sworn in as Minister of State for External Affairs, in charge of Africa, Latin America, and the Gulf on 28 May 2009.

• In May 2014 Tharoor won his re-election from Thiruvananthapuram, defeating O. Rajagopal of the Bharatiya Janata Party by a margin of around 15,000 votes, and got the membership of the 15th Lok Sabha, sitting in Opposition. He was named Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs.

• Shashi Tharoor was removed from the post of Congress spokesperson on 13 October 2014 after he praised his party's opponent, Narendra Modi.

Awards/Nominations

Awards won by Tharoor in the 20th Century

• Rajika Kripalani Young Journalist Award for the Best Indian Journalist under 30 in 1976.

• Federation of Indian Publishers' Hindustan Times Literary Award for the Best Book of the Year for The Great Indian Novel in 1990.

• His book The Great Indian Novel carried off the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Best Book of the Year in the Eurasian Region in 1991.

• Excelsior Award for Excellence in the literature by the Association of Indians in America in 1998.

• Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 1998.

Awards won by Tharoor in early 21st Century

• The Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in International Affairs from the University of Puget Sound in 2000.

• In September 2009, Shashi Tharoor was at the center of a controversy for staying at a five-star hotel for over three months at a time when the Government was talking about austerity.

• Again in 2009, Tharoor commented on Twitter that he would travel “cattle class” in solidarity with all our “holy cows.” He was alleged to equate the travelling public to cattle.

• Once on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, he said people should work rather than staying at home taking a holiday, thereby paying real homage to Mahatma Gandhi.

• In January 2010, Tharoor disdained Nehru for his vision on Indian foreign policy by the Indian media. The critique angered his party, the Indian National Congress. After the controversy, he held a press conference describing the report as "inaccurate" and "tendentious".

• In February 2010, he accompanied then Indian PM Manmohan Singh to Saudi Arabia where he said "We feel that Saudi Arabia has a long and close relationship with Pakistan, that makes Saudi Arabia, even more, a valuable interlocutor for us. When we tell them about our experience, Saudi Arabia listens as somebody who is not in any way an enemy of Pakistan, but a friend of Pakistan and, therefore, will listen with sympathy and concern to a matter of this nature".

• In 2014, Tharoor backed up Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, a social campaign initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Following this, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee lodged a complaint against him to the Congress high command for his pro-Modi stance. Following this, Tharoor was dropped as the official spokesperson of the party.

• In 2016, while speaking at JNU on nationalism, Tharoor compared Kanhaiya, a student charged with sedition, with Bhagat Singh, an Indian independence fighter. This comparison generated a great controversy, even the party distanced itself from Tharoor's views.

Some Lesser Known Facts About Shashi Tharoor

Born in London, Tharoor was a theatre buff in his school days. While in school, he played Antony to Mira Nair’s Cleopatra in a 1974 production of Antony and Cleopatra.

Tharoor began writing at the age of 6, and his first published story appeared in The Free Press Journal, in Mumbai, when he was just 10.

Tharoor is an arts graduate from St. Stephen’s College where his contemporary included historian Ramachandra Guha; politician Salman Khurshid; film-maker Rajiv Mehrotra; the quiz master Siddhartha Basu; and the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Rukun Advani, and Anurag Mathur.

In the year 1975, Tharoor obtained his MA and MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and was awarded the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student.

At Fletcher, he was the first editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs.

He has also been awarded an honorary D. Litt by the University of Puget Sound.

Tharoor completed his Ph.D. at the age of 22.

He started his career as a staff member of ‘UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), in Geneva, in the year 1978.

In 1996, he was appointed as director of Communications and Special Projects and executive assistant to then Security General, ‘Kofi Annan’.

Later, he was appointed as Union – Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, in 2001.

In the year 2007, he was included in the Council of Ministers, under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as Minister of State for External Affairs.

In the year 2009, he contested in the Indian elections and won with the margin of 10,000 votes. In May 2014, he won the re-election with the margin of 15,000 votes and became the member of the 15th Lok Sabha, sitting in Opposition.

He was India’s most-followed politician on Twitter until 2013. He was overtaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Tharoor has been a columnist in The Hindu newspaper (2001-2008), The Times of India, Deccan Chronicle, the Gentleman magazine, and the Indian Express.

Some of his authored books include The Great Indian Novel, The Five Dollar Smile and Other Stories, Show Business, and Riot.